


temporary inhabitants

by brucewaynery



Series: happy steve bingo fills [11]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Gen, Getting Together, Ghosts, Pre-Slash, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, and is a Spooky Boy, college tony stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21605191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brucewaynery/pseuds/brucewaynery
Summary: It's not like Tony particularlywantsto leave the cute ghost roommate he lives with... his lease is up, is all.(apartment hunting)
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Tony Stark
Series: happy steve bingo fills [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1495793
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74
Collections: Happy Steve Bingo 2019





	temporary inhabitants

“Are you really gonna leave me?”

He sounds so heartbroken and dejected Tony almost believes him. 

“You can come look with me, if you want,” he offers, even if he already knows his answer.

“You know I can’t leave this building,” Steve says, floating to sit atop his laptop, cross-legged. Tony, in true post-grad fashion, has no scruples left whatsoever, so carries on typing, completely and utterly numb to the fact that, technically, he’s pretty much giving Steve an external prostate massage.

Steve gives him an unimpressed look. He moves his hands and leans back in his chair.

“There’ll be another student to haunt,” Tony attempts to comfort him.

Steve looks like he’s about to say something, but then breaks out into a smile, “What if you facetime me?”

“And talk to an empty chair in front of the estate agent and possibly my new landlord?”

“Weirder things have happened.”

“Steve.”

He slumps again, and for the life of him, Tony can’t imagine why he’s so sad about him leaving, he’s reluctant to call them friends (mostly because he still thinks he’s a little insane (the things a PhD does to one…), because Steve’s an apparition of a guy who died in the winter of 1941, and Tony’s a science guy, never even believed in ghosts, so by all counts, either 1) he really, truly has utterly lost it, and may as well take up Rhodey’s suggestion that he go to therapy, or 2) ghosts are real), and he’s not going to be lonely for long - an apartment in the middle of Brooklyn, for the price that it is, Tony knows that there’s already someone with a date, ready to take his keys as soon as he goes.

Tony cracks a joke, an awful, poorly delivered one about visiting, and Steve laughs, and his eyes glitter in the sun, that by all logic, should pass straight through him, and he floats off to do whatever he does when he’s not talking to Tony.

The thing about Steve is that sometimes, he’s in the apartment all the time, and sometimes he just fucks off, presumably to the afterlife.

“I can’t stay there forever,” Steve had explained, a year ago.

“They don’t like you?” Tony teased, hanging his head back off the couch, so Steve’s upside down.

Steve just shrugged lightly, “I can only properly die when someone finds a way to kill me.” He’d said it so casually, and Tony remembers freezing up at the idea, even though at that point he still wasn’t 100% sure that he was entirely hallucinating Steve. Turns out, he’d been experimented on when he was younger (“Because I was poor, and I wasn’t gonna live that long anyway,”) something to do with the secrets of immortality and the war effort, but he’d died. Or so they’d thought. Caught between the living and the dead for decades, only transient to both, never settling, he’d… existed, sometimes talking to someone, sometimes just skipping out on years.

“Don’t give me that look,” Steve had said, rolling his eyes, “it’s not all bad,” he reassured, though he’d failed to elaborate. That had been the day that most of the doubt had cleared up.

-

“Honey,” Tony calls, dropping his keys and tugging off his shoes, “I’m home!”

Steve’s napping, or at least, the ghost version of napping, on the couch, probably pretending not to hear him. Tony pokes him right through his belly button, where his seventh shirt button is, Steve’s been wearing the same shirt and suspenders in all the times Tony’s knows him.

Steve jerks up with a yell, “That tickles,” he says, scowling and rubbing the spot.”

“What do you think of this,” Tony says, ignoring Steve’s grumbles as he shoves the floorplan of a walkup in Manhattan under his nose. 

“Terrible,” he says, just as he’s said for every single apartment Tony had shown him.

Tony waves the papers through his head, “You’re gonna have to like one of these someday.” 

Steve gives him an odd look, which is all sorts of unfair, considering he’s actually corporeal. “It’s your new place.”

“But you’re…” Tony trails off, now not sure why he was so adamant that Steve liked his new place. He fights off the blush that’s crawling up his neck. He wants to impress Steve, prove to him… something, he now realises.

Usually, Steve would crack a joke, who knew that being undead for decades would make a person develop a sense of humour? But today he just mutters, “Yeah,” and floats away.

The next time Tony goes to a showing, he shows his real friends instead. But he does leave the brochure on the coffee table, open.

Steve doesn’t talk to him about it.

He fucks off to wherever he goes until Tony’s lease is up and he’s in Manhattan and Steve is simply a memory.

-

Tony’s blood runs cold. 

A name from, god, decades ago now, falls out of Pepper’s mouth and hangs in the air.

“ _Steven Rogers is here to see you, Mr. Stark._ ”

“Thank you, Miss Potts,” Tony says, on instinct.

She holds the door open for a short, skinny, blond guy with shocking blue eyes, and it’s like he’s twenty and halfway through a PhD all over again. He can practically taste the Monster Energy and instant ramen.

And for the first time, he’s real and solid and Tony can’t help but throw him a pen, just to see what happens.

Steve catches it with a smile, “Nice place.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments, [reblogs](https://talesofsuspenses.tumblr.com/post/189370360941/temporary-inhabitants) or the rights to a ghost roommate movie


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